Chapter LOVE-BIRD to LUNKA of L by The Hobson Jobson Dictionary

eaten their fill it is said that they return to their parents in the woods in an orderly manner, and never hurt anybody that they meet by the way.”—Aelian, De Nat. Animal. xvi. 10.

1825.—“An alarm was given by one of the sentries in consequence of a baboon drawing near his post. The character of the intruder was, however, soon detected by one of the Suwarrs, who on the Sepoy’s repeating his exclamation of the broken English ‘Who goes ’ere?’ said with a laugh, ‘Why do you challenge the lungoor? he cannot answer you.’ ”—Heber, ii. 85.

1859.—“I found myself in immediate proximity to a sort of parliament or general assembly of the largest and most human-like monkeys I had ever seen. There were at least 200 of them, great lungoors, some quite four feet high, the jetty black of their faces enhanced by a fringe of snowy whisker.”—Lewin, A Fly on the Wheel, 49.

1884.—“Less interesting personally than the gibbon, but an animal of very developed social instincts, is Semnopithecus entellus, otherwise the Bengal langur. (He) fights for his wives according to a custom not unheard of in other cases; but what is peculiar to him is that the vanquished males ‘receive charge of all the young ones of their own sex, with whom they retire to some neighbouring jungle.’ Schoolmasters and private tutors will read this with interest, as showing the origin and early disabilities of their profession.”—Saturday Rev., May 31, on Sterndale’s Nat. Hist. of Mammalia of India, &c.

LUNGOOTY, s. Hind. langoti. The original application of this word seems to be the scantiest modicum of covering worn for decency by some of the lower classes when at work, and tied before and behind by a string round the waist; but it is sometimes applied to the more ample dhoti (see DHOTY). According to R. Drummond, in Guzerat the “Langoth or Lungota” (as he writes) is “a pretty broad piece of cotton cloth, tied round the breech by men and boys bathing. … The diminutive is Langotee, a long slip of cloth, stitched to a loin band of the same stuff, and forming exactly the T bandage of English Surgeons. …” This distinction is probably originally correct, and the use of languta by Abdurrazzak would agree with it. The use of the word has spread to some of the Indo-Chinese countries. In the quotation from Mocquet it is applied in speaking of an American Indian near the R. Amazon. But the writer had been in India.

c. 1422.—“The blacks of this country have the body nearly naked; they wear only bandages round the middle called lankoutah, which descend from the navel to above the knee.”—Abdurrazzak, in India in XV. Cent. 17.

1526.—“Their peasants and the lower classes all go about naked. They tie on a thing which they call a langoti, which is a piece of clout that hangs down two spans from the navel, as a cover to their nakedness. Below this pendant modesty-clout is another slip of cloth, one end of which they fasten before to a string that ties on the langoti, and then passing the slip of cloth between the two legs, bring it up and fix it to the string of the langoti behind.”—Baber, 333.

c. 1609.—“Leur capitaine auoit fort bonne façon, encore qu’il fust tout nud et luy seul auoit vn langoutin, qui est vne petite pièce de coton peinte.”—Mocquet, 77.

1653.—“Langouti est une pièce de linge dont les Indou se seruent à cacher les parties naturelles.”—De la Boullaye-le-Gouz, ed. 1657, p. 547.

[1822.—“The boatmen go nearly naked, seldom wearing more than a langutty. …”—Wallace, Fifteen Years in India, 410.]

1869.—“Son costume se compose, comme celui de tous les Cambodgiens, d’une veste courte et d’un langouti.”—Rev. des Deux Mondes, lxxix. 854.

“They wear nothing but the langoty, which is a string round the loins, and a piece of cloth about a hand’s breadth fastened to it in front.”—(Ref. lost), p. 26.

LUNKA, n.p. Skt. Lañka. The oldest name of Ceylon in the literature both of Buddhism and Brahmanism. Also ‘an island’ in general.

—, s. A k ind of strong cheroot much prized in the Madras Presidency, and so called from being made of tobacco grown in the ‘islands’ (the local term for which is lañka) of the Godavery Delta.